Human only campaigns - good? bad? tips? ideas?

[Deedlit]

It would bother me to play as a human(Instead of a fellow elf or a fun to roleplay kender), I think pure human characters should be NPCs, as the players should have the worthy races.(Interesting to play maybe to an elf like myself, but not worth playing as. Among humans, playing humans should be very boring). Racial traits to cultures doesn't make sense, as an elf gets it's racial modifiers from being an elf, it doesn't matter who raised it. Elves are part of what make this game DnD, and a human only campaign I would not play in.

 

[The Flying Walrus]

I'm sort of creating a game myself that's kind of like that, but iif you don't want to be a human you can be a strange creature called a Mr. Sautrn, a Tendite, or a bipedial Pig. Of course, most would like to be a human, so I made several different cultures. There's one culture that seems naturally good with technology and such, another that lives in the rugged desert and has higer constitution, another that's mystical and isolated, with boosted PSI abilities, and yet another that's your pretty normal modern society. I think that's a good idea, in other words, but your players may not agree...

 

[EOL]

I think if it were done right I would like it, but It would be more difficult. Imagine Star Trek without any aliens and I think you'll get my point. If it were as well written as the West Wing then yeah it would still be good, but that's obviously a lot harder then writing it with the alien of the week thrown in.

 

[kenjib]

Posts of "me too - I want my demi-humans!" are just as valuable to me by the way. Thanks die_kluge & Deedlit for adding your opinion. I can see how players would feel entitled to all of the options that the PHB presents and that a DM who restricts some (or alot) of it could be seen as heavy handed. Is that part of how you feel?

Do you think that a DM who does something like this is more interested in playing the game -his- way instead of how everyone wants to play? Or, rather, is it valid in the name of campaign setting to drastically alter the default options - WoT for example. Of course WoT has the benefit of playtesting, which opens up an additional can of worms - which is fair game for this thread as well. Do house rules create player anxiety? Is this a good argument for not creating human cultural or individual "racial" modifiers?

 

[kenjib]

I think if it were done right I would like it, but It would be more difficult. Imagine Star Trek without any aliens and I think you'll get my point. If it were as well written as the West Wing then yeah it would still be good, but that's obviously a lot harder then writing it with the alien of the week thrown in.

LOL! Good point, but then again Conan is in a world like this but has his fair share of exciting creature features. Perhaps that would be a good model to base it off of. Instead of having a dungeon crawl with several different strange creatures to fight in succession you can design them with more buildup leading to one strange creature. Hmm...how to do good buildup though that lasts for a decent amount of game time? Or maybe something kind of like H.P. Lovecraft's "In the Mountains of Madness" too - how would you pull something like that off?

You're right. It seems pretty difficult.

 

[Laslo Tremaine]

I think Call of Cthulhu is a good template for this kind of thing.

In CoC you build suspense by running into cultists and foiling their mechanations. Only after you have uncovered the plots and defeated the minions do you find out what other-worldly terror is really manipulating things behind the scenes.

 

[Andor]

Star Trek Aliens

I think if it were done right I would like it, but It would be more difficult. Imagine Star Trek without any aliens and I think you'll get my point. If it were as well written as the West Wing then yeah it would still be good, but that's obviously a lot harder then writing it with the alien of the week thrown in.

Gimmie a break, Star Trek aliens are universally more human like than even the most underplayed half-elf. Having an oddly shaped forehead doesn't make for a good alien. Christopher Columbus ran into a wider variety of 'alien' cultures while exploring the Carribean. Heck you could even rewrite most star trek plots to have taken place as Columbus explored the Carribean. Of course he didn't have a prime directive. Stick your PC's on a ship during an age of exploration and you're set.

As for modifying base classes to reflect the conditions they spring from, if it's such a bad idea why is Rule 0 in the PHB and why are several pages devoted to it in the DMG?

-Andor

 

[Chimera]

My last campaign was Humans or Dwarves only. And there were only a hundred or so Dwarves around, so you weren't likely to get a lot of support as one. As a consequence, Humans were much more xenophobic, since almost every other race was an enemy.

I introduced a one-off Halfling NPC to the campaign, but no human NPC took her seriously, if only due to her size.

 

[KnowTheToe]

It would bother me to play as a human(Instead of a fellow elf or a fun to roleplay kender), I think pure human characters should be NPCs, as the players should have the worthy races.(Interesting to play maybe to an elf like myself, but not worth playing as. Among humans, playing humans should be very boring). Racial traits to cultures doesn't make sense, as an elf gets it's racial modifiers from being an elf, it doesn't matter who raised it. Elves are part of what make this game DnD, and a human only campaign I would not play in.

This is why it is so much more work with an all human game. As a DM you have to create cultures the players find interesting and can use to define their character. Using elves, dwarves, etc the cultural stereotypes give many players a keen edge to ROLEPLAY with. It is different than their daily culture. I personally love all human worlds and games, but find that all of the players have to be familiar with the world and its cultures, or it may not work.

 

[Deedlit]

Partly, and part of it has to do with some of the appeal being able to play different races. I like elves, but I meet them all the time and happen to be one. And humans have their racial stereotype too(Short lived barbarians who are very adaptable). Also, how would you humans feel about playing in an orc-only campaign. That is what a human-only campaign is like to an elf.